Initial exploratory data analysis of Asia-Pacific conflict trends

Introduction

Conflict (including political unrest) in the Asia-Pacific is multifarious and interconnected. The gif below displays cumulative conflict events tracked by ACLED for the past 10 years.

Making sense of this data will require a deeper examination of the various contexts in this region and the ways in which they interact. Three major foci are observed – one around Afghanistan and Pakistan, one in the Philippines, and one in Myanmar and its border regions.

Below is a table comparing the the number of political conflict events and fatalities in the countries that ACLED has been monitoring since 2014. Conflict has decreased across these countries since 2014, with the notable exception of Myanmar.

Note that the following event sub-types have been filtered out for the data in this report: Agreement, Change to group/activity, Headquarters or base established.

10 years of conflict: comparison 2014 and 2023

country	events_2014	events_2023	events_diff%	fatalities_2014	fatalities_2023	fatalities_diff%
Myanmar	899	13232	1371.86	501	16060	3105.59
Nepal	250	2490	896.00	6	10	66.67
Sri Lanka	158	894	465.82	7	7	0.00
Bangladesh	1123	2693	139.80	391	337	-13.81
Pakistan	4201	8536	103.19	5419	2333	-56.95
Thailand	1304	608	-53.37	424	57	-86.56
Vietnam	47	17	-63.83	29	10	-65.52
Cambodia	270	90	-66.67	23	0	-100.00

As ACLED expanded the number of countries it monitored, a more comprehensive comparison is possible for the five-year horizon:

5 years of conflict: comparison 2019 and 2023

country	events_2019	events_2023	events_diff%	fatalities_2019	fatalities_2023	fatalities_diff%
Myanmar	1815	13232	629.04	1512	16060	962.17
Indonesia	1644	3570	117.15	210	214	1.90
North Korea	19	37	94.74	9	12	33.33
Iran	2602	4066	56.26	478	214	-55.23
Bangladesh	1738	2693	54.95	391	337	-13.81
Japan	1299	1792	37.95	0	0	0.00
South Korea	5493	6321	15.07	0	0	0.00
Pakistan	7686	8536	11.06	1157	2333	101.64
Thailand	568	608	7.04	174	57	-67.24
India	23672	22865	-3.41	1529	1213	-20.67
Sri Lanka	954	894	-6.29	304	7	-97.70
Mongolia	94	87	-7.45	0	0	0.00
Cambodia	98	90	-8.16	5	0	-100.00
Nepal	3242	2490	-23.20	49	10	-79.59
Malaysia	224	155	-30.80	15	0	-100.00
Philippines	1901	1251	-34.19	1706	855	-49.88
China	2516	1647	-34.54	13	9	-30.77
Vietnam	58	17	-70.69	1	10	900.00
Afghanistan	8373	1465	-82.50	23413	1125	-95.19
Hong Kong	1235	96	-92.23	1	0	-100.00

Similar to the 10-year comparisons, most countries in the region have seen decreases in both the number of events and the number of conflict-related fatalities. Of note are Myanmar and Pakistan for their increased fatalities and Indonesia, Iran and Bangladesh for their increase in political incidents.

The decreases in violence are apparent in most countries, as can be seen from the trendlines below; however, as we will explore in the next few sections, much more can be gained from country-based analyses.

Protests vs non-protests

Event type

Streamgraphs

Fatalities over time

From the chart below, sorted in order of number of fatalities from political incidents per quarter, it is clear that Afghanistan, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines have experienced severe political unrest, ranging from war, terrorism (with its hallmark explosions and remote violence) and political killings. Conflict in Afghanistan and Philippines has fallen significantly since its peak, but Myanmar is still in full conflagration and Pakistan is on the upswing:

It appears that Indonesia, Iran and Cambodia each have experienced much political violence leading up to elections, though in Cambodia, the deaths associated with protests in 2018 have served as a deterrent.

Events over time

The streamgraphs below show the number of political incidents per quarter broken down by event type, sorted in order by the number of political incidents.

It should be noted that in “stable” countries, the flavour of political conflict consists mainly of protests (which indicate widespread dissatisfaction but not that all nonviolent means have been exhausted).

Widespread dissatisfaction has manifested in Thailand in 2014 and in 2021. However, the Thai state has responded by firmly clamping down on its citizenry in both instances. Core issues have yet to be addressed and it is likely that unrest will flare up again. However, the share of protests compared to violent political incidents seems to be worsening, indicating that more actors (the state included) believe that non-violent means have been exhausted.

Bangladesh seems to have an outsized number of riots. Whilst protests are a natural feature of any democracy, riots are less so, given their disruptive and violent nature. Bangladesh seems to have a higher ratio of riots to protests than any other country except Papua New Guinea; this is not an esteemed group to be in, as it speaks to the inability of the state to maintain order and the ease of inciting the population (meaning that there are a multitude of injustices to inflame).

Political incidents in Bangladesh (as we will explore in later section) had been falling until they increased around 2018, around the time of the Rohingya genocide and the influx of 700,000 refugees into Cox’s Bazaar. This, predictably, has been destabilising for the country, bringing to light many longstanding issues and grudges.

Let’s take a closer look at some countries of interest and narrow down from a ten-year horizon to a five-year one:

Myanmar and Afghanistan bear all the patterns of war. But what is surprising is the extent to which Philippine civil society has deteriorated due to damage from the drug war and the resulting political violence. When compared to other countries, their share of protests is abysmally low, lower even than Cambodia. Even as the drug war operations ceased and killings began to drop off sharply, the flavour of political unrest in the Philippines seems deeply changed, with its participatory democracy suffering massive setbacks. This is after all, not only the country of the EDSA revolution, but of the dictator Marcos as well.

The Vietnamese state has seized the opportunity presented by COVID to advance state authority and clamp down on all types of political incidents (the clearest pattern of this in the region). China, for all the news of its vaunted lockdowns, only saw a more modest reduction in political incidents and is currently undergoing a mild increase in unrest related to labour and wage issues.

Indonesia is also experiencing an uptick in political incidents. The reasons behind this are to be explored.

In post-genocide Myanmar, with the longstanding civil war with ethnic and communal militias in the background, the population exploded in protests against the Tatmadaw’s coup. However, nonviolent means were soon exhausted and the country is now in full civil war.

With the victory of the Taliban, Afghanistan has seen a 96% reduction on conflict fatalities and a 83% drop in conflict events since 2019 levels. However, civil society has by no means recovered, nor does Afghanistan bear any of the hallmarks of a participatory democracy.

Per Capita

It makes sense to cluster the data – there seems to be a “repressive” cluster (China, Laos, North Korea, Singapore, Vietnam). We have “functioning democracies” of various stripes, at the bottom-left corner. We have war-torn countries – Myanmar and Afghanistan.

And finally, we have the “main sequence” running diagonally down the middle.

Afghanistan-Pakistan

The plots below show the past 5 years of conflict data in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the border area between the two marked in a light grey.

The first three years show ultimately successful Taliban insurgency in full swing, with quite a significant amount of spillover into Pakistan, culminating in the US withdrawal in 2021. 2022 shows markedly less conflict, though we can see the beginnings of this “migration” of conflict (we don’t know how literal this is yet) from Afghanistan to Pakistan, this is more evident in 2023. This is in also line with the longstanding Taliban policy of disregard for the Durand Line.

Although ACLED only began data collection in Afghanistan in 2019, ACLED data on Pakistan was extracted all the way back to 2013. This is plotted below.

Immediately apparent is how comparable the levels of conflict in and outside of Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan are. This 100 km-thick strip of land only lags behind the rest of the country (including the capital) in the number of protests and strategic developments.

And, as observed from the maps above, we see an increase in political violence after the Taliban victory. As mentioned, this is in line with Taliban policy, but it remains to be explored how centrally-directed these efforts are.

Perhaps a more instructive view of violence in Pakistan’s border areas comes from an examination of conflict fatalities over time. Explosions and remote violence, battles and violence against civilians were once much more common in Pakistan’s border areas – this was likely dependent on the cycles of stabilisation and destabilisation in Afghanistan. This situation should be monitored for further deterioration since conflict is on the upswing.

Myanmar

Unlike in Afghanistan and Pakistan, cross-border conflict seems to be largely contained within Myanmar, likely because the militaries of the surrounding countries are much strong than the Tatmadaw as well as the prevalence of ethnic armed organisations in the border areas.

There are exceptions, firstly, Cox’s Bazaar, which seemed to have an elevated level of political violence even before the first military crackdown on the Rohingya. Admittedly, there had been Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar prior to the commencement of ACLED’s data collection.

Also Chiang Rai, though a cursory inspection of the data indicates political violence mostly driven by domestic issues, like the cyclical election violence in Thailand and calls for reform to the monarchy.

Within Myanmar itself, with reference to the maps below, the fighting seems to have come to a very strategic juncture. At first glance, the fighting seems to have lessened in 2024, but with reference to the line graph of monthly fatalities, we know that the fighting has instead been concentrated.

The reasons behind this are various. Firstly, for those not well-versed in the Myanmar civil war, the rebels and the National Unity Government have sought to isolate military garrisons from each other, giving to the very linear pattern of violence as both sides contest for control over the road network. The rebels do this to try and limit the military’s ability to project power into rebel-held terrain, with the final intention of pushing towards Naypyitaw, the gold diamond in the middle of the country maps below.

The plots below are of the Myanmar civil war, with events (red) plotted over the road network (blue). Gold squares are Tatamadaw regional commands and the blue squares are border crossings.

In the northeast, Lashio has fallen (and Muse has lost five out of ten border gates with China) and in the southeast Loikaw has fallen (not a major command post, but a city at a critical junction) and so has the crossing with Chiang Mai at Myawady. In the northwest, we see intensification of conflict in Rakhine in preparation for the battle of Sittwe. With the northern garrisons isolated and cut off, the main front moves towards the concurrent invasion of Mandalay.

The military no longer has the ability to push beyond the positions they already hold. If the rebels can defeat the Mandalay garrison, the Tatmadaw will have lost.

Bangladesh

Conflict in most parts of Bangladesh has been on the decline, with the notable exceptions of Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar (where the Rohingya fled).

Actors

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